50 years later, The Beatles' music returns to Red Rocks

Cheryl Preheim and KUSA , KUSA10:00 AM. MST August 18, 2014

London, United Kingdom: Picture taken 18 August 1964 of the British pop music group "Beatles" leaving the London airport for a tour in United-States. Paul McCartney was just 24 when The Beatles first recorded their hit track "When I'm Sixty-Four".(Photo: - AFP/Getty Images)

MORRISON - It was the summer of 1964. Lyndon Johnson was president. You'd spend a nickel on a stamp. And a band from England was about to descend on Colorado.

The night before the Beatles landed at what was then Stapleton Airport in Denver, the police found hundreds of teenagers hiding in the bushes around the airport.

It was a frenzy.

The Beatles had only performed a handful of times in the Unites States, but half a century ago at Red Rocks, the fans there couldn't know the history they were about to see.

Nicholas DeSciose had just graduated from East High School where he was head photographer of the East High Angels.

He was 18 years old, and about to take on an assignment that would make him the envy of nearly every teenager in America.

Fresh off the Ed Sullivan Show, the band from England was about to see the majesty of Colorado's Red Rocks.

"I don't think they had the slightest idea where they were. They were put in a car, put in a tunnel in a cement room and these people came in and asked them questions," DeScoise said,

DeSciose had all access passes, even backstage, and was on stage when John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr first set eyes on the spectacular amphitheater and everyone filling it.

"All these girls were screaming and I was like, 'Whoa!' he laughed, "It was crazy."

One of those enthusiastic fans was Linda Sue Shirkey, in the audience for her 16th birthday. The tickets were a present from her boyfriend.

Shirkey's sweetheart had saved up for weeks; the tickets were three times more expensive than an average show.

"Six dollars. Six sixty I think," she said.

The Beatles sang 10 songs that night.

DeScoise documented it all with 13 rolls of film, each negative carefully preserved in his studio, and some cemented in history.

"I have a few pictures in the rock and roll hall of fame," he said.

"We were all kids, we were almost the same age. We were wearing the same kind of clothes, and walking down this hall. There was this huge flag and it struck us, boy would that be funny. Took a few frames of film," he said, talking about his iconic snapshot of the Beatles in America.

The Beatles in Colorado, for the first and only time.

When "1964" The Tribute returns to light up Red Rocks on Friday, Aug. 22, Shirkey will be back in the amphitheater, to relive a moment in American music history all over again.